LJ FH: Youth league plans

By Ed Piper

"We're going to start working with girls, probably as young as second grade," said Amanda Warford, new field hockey coach at La Jolla High this fall. "We'll have play for girls through middle school. We'll split them into different teams."

These words have to be music to Athletic Director Paula Conway's ears. Conway, for several years the Vikings' field hockey coach, has invested plenty of sweat equity into the program to help it grow.

But it took someone like Warford, who with her husband Tucker Warford, has the time to implement a youth program in the sport.

That's the only way to build the program and begin to move it from "the old college try"--excellent athletes who are athletic, can run, and want to compete--but who haven't been introduced to stick skills until entering high school in the ninth grade, to a higher level.

Serra and Scripps Ranch: those are the elite programs in the area, and their girls begin field hockey young. In fact, they have so many athletes participating in the sport who enter high school with game experience since the sixth grade, that Scripps, for one, has to cut players during tryouts.

All of those things are the enviable elements that La Jolla High field hockey supporters would like to see characterize the Viking program, as well.

It's not about making winning the golden calf. It's about raising the girls to a higher playing level, one at which they can build on skills they've already honed in earlier years as they move into the CIF program at the high school level.

Part of greater experience and being tried under game conditions is sport I.Q.: instinctively knowing what to do in close games, a knowledge of the intricacies of the sport's rules, and the like.

An analogy would be the difference between the player new to softball on the La Jolla team last year who had to be reminded to tag up after a pop fly was caught, versus knowing that and applying it in crunch situations.

There is something be said for interscholastic sports that don't require a student to play on a travel team to make the school team and enjoy herself while competing with friends. On the other hand, there can also be a rich experience in truly perfecting the skills of a sport, yielding the satisfaction of reaching a high level in the sport and meeting elevated personal and team goals.

The latter could be possible through such a youth program as Amanda Warford talked about Thurs., Sept. 21, before her team's home game against Del Norte on the Muirlands Middle School field.